1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a man-portable, chemical sensor capable of detecting clandestine burial sites of human remains and to a method for detecting clandestine burial sites of human remains.
2. Description of the Related Art
Locating clandestine graves, identification of victims (development of biological profiles from unidentified persons) and odor recognition (in locating and identifying individuals) are still very difficult, costly and time consuming tasks which impact law enforcement, intelligence and military operations around the world. The detection of buried human remains (which may have been buried in a clandestine act where human remains are buried in a hastily dug, shallow grave) is most often accomplished with the aid of manual probing techniques, ground-penetrating radar, or canines trained to detect human remains.
Manual probing is very inexpensive and is used to locate disturbed soil regions, but cannot confirm the presence of a corpse and can only be used in small areas. Ground-penetrating radar is usually expensive and also locates areas of disturbed soil. Under ideal conditions, and if the grave is very fresh, ground-penetrating radar can sometimes indicate the presence of a corpse, but radar can be easily fooled by objects in the environment (e.g., roots, stumps, rocks, debris, man-made objects, etc.) and requires a significant amount of training to interpret the signals indicative of clandestine graves. Canines that detect human remains, commonly referred to as cadaver dogs, have been minimally represented in the law enforcement canine population across the United States. For a variety of reasons, this canine detector specialty has not been given the attention that is afforded both the explosive and narcotic specialties. The current concern facing cadaver dog units is that training is inadequate since it is unknown to what odor signals the dogs respond to when alerting and the alerting may not completely be in response to odor. This jeopardizes search and seizure as well as probable cause rules currently established for search warrants and chain of custody. Many agencies usually employ a combination of these methods when searching for clandestine graves, mass graves or missing persons which also results in an increased cost, significant utilization of man-hours, logistic and time concerns.
In an article entitled “Decompositional Odor Analysis Database” in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 49, No. 4, July 2004, Vass et al. reported a study in which the volatile and semivolatile compounds that migrate upward from human burials to the soil surface during decomposition were identified. The study sought to determine the chemical markers associated with odor of human decomposition, primarily aimed at legitimizing the training efforts of cadaver locating dogs. This study focused on human remains in graves of various depths and of various ages (fresh—15 years old) under a variety of environmental conditions. The results of this study has been a collection of different chemical compounds liberated from human decomposition in burial situations, of which only a fraction make it to the surface in a reproducible fashion regardless of the depth of burial and age of the grave.
However, there is still a need for a man-portable clandestine grave detector that will take the guess-work out of current methods using canines and ground-penetrating radar, which have historically been unreliable.